Roomies
by cheride
Summary: -"Even on the road to hell a flower will make you smile."


_This is a work of fanfiction, for entertainment purposes only. The characters and concepts of Hardcastle and McCormick do not belong to me, but to their creators._

**Author's Notes:** A lighter look at the dark days of San Quentin, because at least one good thing came out of those two years.

* * *

**Roomies**

By Cheride

McCormick barely heard the door clank open; you could learn to sleep through a lot when you had to. The words sank in a little deeper—'Brought you a new friend, Mac'—but not by much. He drew the coarse blanket further around his head and kept sleeping.

00000

"What the hell is _that_?"

McCormick's eyes shot open. You could sleep through a lot, but a specific question directed your way from a surprisingly close distance wasn't one of those things—not if you had any sense of self-preservation whatsoever. He rolled to his other side and leaned over the edge of his bunk, peering into the shadows below. The young man on the bottom bunk was on his back, lying perfectly still, eyes wide open, the very picture of bewilderment. And McCormick thought there might've been just a hint of near-panic hiding beneath the surface, too.

"New arrival, huh?" he asked.

The man nodded. "Got here last night. You don't remember?"

"I was sleeping," McCormick said shortly.

The new arrival looked immediately crestfallen. "Sorry," he answered contritely.

Mark felt his eyebrow creep up in surprise, and he found himself muttering a response. "'S okay." He examined the other guy more closely; the panic seemed to have clawed its way a little closer to the surface. He took a breath. "First time inside?"

"No!" The puffy indignation was almost laughable.

Settling for a small grin, McCormick drilled down the facts. "First time in a state pen?"

The guy deflated. "Yeah. County a couple of times before, though. My lawyer tried to work out a deal to get me in down in Chino, but they're all full up." He looked around warily as he added, "Lotsa places are full up; this was the best they could do."

"You know how it is," McCormick said philosophically. "Hard to find a hotel these days that includes a meal plan; word gets around. Next thing you know, you can't even get a reservation."

The other man chuckled. "A reservation. Yeah. _Hey_," he said suddenly, pushing himself up to lean against the wall, "you know what we oughta do? We oughta talk to the warden about renting out a couple of cells for the weekend. You know, like to those rich office-type guys who go on those wilderness adventure trips and think they can handle anything?" He grinned. "Yeah, they can come here, see if they can handle the big house for a couple of days; see if they think it's any harder than eating berries and catching fish with a stick. Sort of like a dude ranch, you know?" He poked his head out from the bunk to look at McCormick directly. "And you and me, we'd volunteer to be the instructors. Teach 'em what it's like to be a real con. Whattaya think?"

McCormick stared at the animated face of the small man. "I think maybe they got south block mixed up with the psych ward and dropped you in the wrong place last night."

"Nah, you're just not seeing the big picture. We'd be heroes. The state's always whining about how much it costs to keep guys locked up; we'd actually be helping them bring in some money. Those office workers would go back home with a bunch of stories to tell around the water cooler and then their friends would come, too. SQ makes a profit, some goofy guys in suits get to feel like big bad asses because they survived a weekend with killers and stuff, and we tell the warden that we're learning business skills to increase our chances of success when we're back on the outside. It's win-win." He grinned up at McCormick. "They'd probably even send some reporters in here to tell the world about us."

And then McCormick laughed. The guy was just so sincere in his excitement, how could you not get caught up in it? "Okay," he agreed. "You convince the warden, and I'll sign up to teach at your weekend camp."

Just then, a howl, loud and guttural, and not even recognizably human, split the air. "That," the newcomer said, pointing a hand. "What the hell _is_ that?"

"Oh, _that_." McCormick laughed lightly. "That's just Smokey. You know, like the bear? When you see him, you'll understand. But he gets hungry. He's lobbying to have morning chowtime moved up. You learn to ignore it. But you don't want to get in his way—especially when there's food around."

"Okay. Good tip."

Mark laughed again, then reached a hand toward his new roommate. "Name's McCormick, by the way, Mark McCormick. Lotta guys just call me Skid."

The other man took the offered hand, smiling broadly. "Good to meet you, Skid, even in here. And I'm Teddy Hollins."

00000

"I thought you said that guy, Lancaster, knew what he was talking about," Hollins huffed.

"I think what I _actually_ said," McCormick clarified with a grin, "was that his head wasn't as far up his ass as most shrinks." He became more serious. "And I did say that he seemed like a pretty on-the-level guy. I still think that, no matter what he might've said to you." He waited a moment, but there was no obliging answer of the unasked question, so he finally just blurted it out. "So what _did_ he say to you?"

Teddy shook his head. "You'll never believe it. Said I seem to have . . . how did he phrase that?" He stared off into the air for a few seconds, apparently wanting to get it just right. "Oh, yeah. 'A penchant for exaggeration, and a worrisome lack of regard for reality'." He pulled up short and wheeled around from his agitated pacing. "Can you believe that?" he demanded.

Mark couldn't help it; he laughed, though he could tell Hollins was totally serious. "Yeah," he said in his most sincere tone, "he sized me up pretty quick, too, the bastard."

"You're not saying you agree with him?" Hollins was obviously astounded.

McCormick was still grinning. "Come on, Teddy. I've known you, what? Maybe thirty-six hours? I've already lost track of the crazy ideas you've had, and the first one started like five minutes in. I could see where some guys might think you're a little out of touch with the real world."

And then Hollins took a half-step toward his cellmate, locking his eyes on the other. "But not you, right? Just some guy with papers on the wall. _You_ know I'm not crazy, right?"

The grin faded as McCormick heard the desperate need for assurance. "I doubt if Lancaster actually said you were _crazy_," he objected.

"Whatever he _said_, that's what he _thinks_. I could tell." Hollins repeated the earlier question. "But not you, right?"

"Nah, not me, Ted," Mark answered confidently. "Lancaster's probably just trying to recruit a few more people to his groups. It's like job security."

With a relieved expression, Teddy dropped onto his cot. "Yeah," he agreed, "job security." Suddenly his eyes lit up again. "Hey, you know, I bet there's a lot of guys in here who'd do just about anything to get an extra hour or so a week out of lock-up. Maybe we could do a little reading in the library, figure out some symptoms that would interest the doc, then come up with some stories for guys to tell when they went in for their meetings. We could sell the information for very reasonable rates; kind of a consulting fee."

"I think most of these guys have enough problems," McCormick told him with a small grin, "without needing to make up any extra. Besides, do you really want to be putting psychotic thoughts into some of these heads? But you tell me when you come up with an idea that doesn't involve making the socially maladjusted criminal mind even more off-balance, and we'll see what we can do."

Teddy laughed good-naturedly. "I'm gonna figure it out yet, Skid, you wait and see. They won't be able to stop us." Then he stretched out onto his cot, and Mark suddenly found himself believing that if anyone could come up with a scam to make the next six months more bearable, it would be Teddy Hollins.

00000

"Hey, Skid?" The voice cut through the darkness.

"Yeah, Teddy?"

"It's been almost two months; do you think that's long enough?"

McCormick pondered that for a few seconds before he asked warily, "Long enough for what, Ted?" Sometimes guys expected a lot of things from their cellmates, though he wouldn't have thought Hollins would fall into that group.

But Teddy laughed. "Don't worry; this isn't a come on."

"Thank God," Mark answered with a rueful chuckle. "I'd hate to have to break your heart." He tried to force the thin, battered lump under his head into something resembling a pillow, then continued, "So what's on your mind?"

"I was wondering if it'd be okay to ask how you ended up here?"

McCormick arched an eyebrow, though the man in the bunk below probably wouldn't have recognized such subtlety even if he'd been able to see it. He put his surprise into words. "You waited two months to ask me _that_?"

"Some guys don't like to talk about it," Hollins explained.

That much was true, McCormick had to admit. He'd once seen a perfectly normal meal time turn into a near-murder when Gus Fowler had used his dinner tray to beat a guy to a pulp just for wondering what line of business Gus had been in before getting sent up. Sometimes people were just a little over-sensitive.

"Maybe," he finally said to his roommate, "but I don't mind. GTA."

"Did you do it?"

"Now you're really not supposed to ask _that_," McCormick admonished with a slight laugh.

"I know," Hollins sighed. "This place is full of innocent patsies, right?"

"It ruins all the righteous indignation if you have to accept responsibility."

"Yeah, well I don't have any problem tellin' anyone I really knocked over all those car washes that got me sent up."

McCormick smirked in the darkness. "Car washes, Teddy?"

"Hey, do you have any idea how much money all those quarters add up to?"

"Enough to make all this worth your while, I hope."

Hollins was silent for a moment. "Maybe not that much," he finally replied.

"Probably not," Mark agreed. "And do you really think any _car_ would be worth it?"

"You saying you really are innocent, Skid?" Hollins sounded almost disappointed.

"You really want to hear all this?" McCormick asked with a sigh. "I mean, everybody's got a story, but none of 'em are really all that different. A detail here and there and change the names to protect the guilty; one's as good as the next."

"Not to me," Teddy insisted.

McCormick wasn't sure why his life history should matter much to anyone else, though he couldn't deny that in the two months Hollins had been in residence he'd labeled the newcomer as one of the truly decent guys, and there just weren't all that many of those inside these walls. Maybe he'd just forgotten what it was like to be around people who were simply genuinely interested in other people without ulterior motives. Not that Teddy wasn't his own unique brand of self-centered, but Mark tended to believe that was closer to blissful oblivion than any true malice.

Giving a mental shrug, he decided there probably wasn't any harm in trying to explain the inexplicable, though in his more recent sessions with that shrink, Lancaster, he had promised to try and quit dwelling on some of the more maddening details. Not that there were many that _weren't_ maddening. Still, sometimes it felt good just to vent, and he was pretty sure Teddy would be a receptive audience.

"It was a Porsche," McCormick began, then grinned as he heard the appreciative whistle from below. "Don't forget," he said with mock severity, "there's _no_ car worth this.

"But it was a _nice_ car," he continued after a couple of seconds. "And the best part was that it was mine. I won't bore you with all the details, but for a really long time I never thought I'd be able to put much together in the way of a real life. Caught some bad breaks growing up back East, then made a few mistakes and did some time when I came out here, when all I really wanted to do was race.

"After I got out last time, I thought I finally had it figured out. I was working some crappy jobs, but I was starting to get some races, getting my name out there—really starting to get it going. And I had a girl."

"Uh-oh."

And though he didn't find anything remotely amusing about his most recent love interest, McCormick had to chuckle at Teddy's intuitive understanding of life. "You got that right," he said firmly. "Melinda Marshall is one of life's biggest 'uh-oh's'. But it was good at first. We'd been together a while and I sorta thought she might be _the one_, if such a thing even exists. And I thought she thought the same.

"When I got the Porsche, we were together and thought we always would be. She was working steady and had a good history—never been busted or anything you know. Money was a little tight, so we figured we could save a few bucks by registering the car in her name. But a few months later, things weren't going so well. We had one last big blow-up and she threw me out. I never thought twice about taking my car when I left."

"Oh, Skid."

McCormick could hear what sounded like a palm being slapped to a forehead, and he figured Hollins was being intuitive again.

"Yeah. It didn't take long. She reported the car stolen the next day, and I was in the lock-up by dinnertime."

"So what'd you do, resist arrest or something? Try to skip out on a bond?"

"Huh?" McCormick suddenly felt out of the loop, and thought Hollins might rapidly be losing some of his intuition points. "What're you talking about, Teddy?"

"I mean," Hollins clarified, "what'd you do that finally landed you here? Musta been something really stupid."

"Haven't you been listening?" Mark asked slowly. "They arrested me for taking my car."

"Yeah, but . . ." Teddy's objection dwindled as he seemed to finally put the pieces together. "You don't mean that's _all_?"

"Seems the state of California has a pretty strict interpretation of ownership," McCormick answered dryly.

"I can't believe it!" Teddy cried, and though McCormick heard the sudden movement below him, he was still surprised when the guy stood on his own mattress, popped a head up from the shadows, latched onto the top bunk, and gazed intently through the dimness.

"You can't be serious!"

McCormick squirmed around a bit to look directly at his now close-at-hand cellie. "This is one thing I never joke about, Ted."

"I guess not," Hollins agreed solemnly. "But didn't you have a PD? It can't be legal to lock a guy up when he's just taking what's his. We gotta file some kinda appeal or something." He was picking up steam; righteous indignation by proxy. "There's gotta be something we can do. We'll get a message to your judge and—"

"_No_." For somebody that wasn't dwelling on the details, McCormick thought that had come out a little more vehemently than necessary.

Even Teddy seemed taken aback, and McCormick supposed he was probably a pretty hard guy to faze. But the younger man didn't hesitate for long. "Look, man, you shouldn't be here; anyone could see that. I don't know what went on at your trial, but now, if he looked back on it, I'm sure the judge would agree."

"I said no, Teddy." He drew in a breath. "You don't understand. It's not like my judge was out to lunch, or just overlooked some critical piece of evidence, or something. He _understood_. He was pretty arrogant about it all; made it clear he thought I'd done something completely stupid. I mean, just _dumb_. I think he thought he was teaching me a lesson, ya know? Like you'd send a kid to his room. It wasn't any more important to him than that. He grabbed away two years of my life with no more concern than taking away dessert from a two year old. Guys like that _never_ think they've made a mistake."

"But—"

"But nothing," McCormick interrupted. "I appreciate the thought, Teddy, really. But there's nothing that can be done. Took me a long time to understand that, but I got it now. I'm here, and nothin's gonna change it."

Teddy looked dejected. "It's just that there aren't that many guys in here who can honestly say they got totally screwed by the system. There oughta be a way to change it."

"Yeah," Mark said heavily, "there oughta. But there isn't, because the system _doesn't_ work, Ted; you should know that. And it's guys like that hard-ass Hardcastle who make sure it doesn't.

"But I'll be out of here in a few months and then it'll all be over. I'll have my life back, and there won't be a goddamn thing he can do about it."

Hollins didn't offer any more objections after that, just silently climbed back into his own bunk. And McCormick went back to trying to punch the lumpy pillow into a comfortable shape, knowing it didn't matter because he'd never be able to sleep anyway, now that he'd see that cold-hearted, patronizing judge every time he closed his eyes.

00000

McCormick was carefully removing his few personal touches from the wall of the small space that had been his home for two years, folding some of them meticulously to place into a single duffle bag, throwing others into a trash pile. Some things just weren't worth remembering.

"Leave that one, would ya?"

McCormick glanced at the poster he'd been reaching for; the oval track full of fast cars suspended in freeze-frame didn't really seem Teddy's cup of tea, though the overlay of the buxom brunette beckoning from the winner's circle was certainly worthwhile. He gestured to the other picture still hanging on the wall. "Wouldn't you rather keep Pamela Sue Martin?" _Dynasty_ was all the rage in the common room these days.

But Hollins shook his head. "Nah. The cars seem to fit. And you can send me another one when it's a picture of you there kissin' the girl after the race."

"I'll do that," Mark answered, smiling almost sadly. He'd been looking forward to this day for two miserably long years and never dreamed there'd be anything he'd miss when he walked out of the front gates, but the small man perched on the top bunk to stay out of the way had changed his mind about that. Teddy had made these last six months more bearable than he'd thought they could be. He left the racing poster hanging on the wall.

"Not that I'd _mind_ keeping Pam," Teddy added after a few seconds.

McCormick laughed and kept packing.

He was ready a full ten minutes before his final escort was scheduled to reach his cell.

"You know I won't be able to write," McCormick said into the silence that had settled. He reflected quickly that there hadn't been much silence since Teddy showed up. "They'll never let it through."

"I know," Hollins replied sullenly.

"You're gonna be okay, Ted," he told his friend. "It's barely six more months."

"It's gonna seem longer."

He couldn't argue with that. "But I got pretty lucky in my last six months," he finally said with a grin. "I'm only a little bummed out I never made con of the month."

That seemed to finally get through and Hollins laughed. "Stiff competition," he said.

McCormick heard the boot heels clicking down the catwalk and extended his hand. "It's been real, Teddy. You take care of yourself, and don't let anybody tell you your plans won't work."

Hollins nodded, shaking the hand vigorously. "Nah, not even that shrink, Lancaster. What does he know, anyway?"

"That's the spirit." McCormick leaned closer for a final whispered comment not intended for the ears of the approaching guard. "If you're headin' back to LA after, look me up; I'll be around. And if there's ever anything you need . . ."

"Thanks, Skid."

Hollins moved away from the door, and McCormick allowed himself to be ushered out one last time. He led the way from the cell but had only taken a few steps when he heard a voice call out.

"Hey, Skid. Skid! I forgot to tell you. A restaurant that just serves lots of fancy coffee—you know, like over in those French places?" Hollins' voice got louder. "For the snooty people, right? Coffee, and maybe some donuts or something? Skid?"

McCormick just laughed as he heard the familiar refrain fading behind him. "Yeah, Skid, it could work!"


End file.
